On July 11, 2001, the Phoenix Center held its inaugural U.S. Telecoms Symposium in Washington, D.C. Over 60 senior telecommunications industry executives and policymakers attended this year’s Symposium in order to hear not only from two Members of the United States House of Representatives, but also from such leading telecoms players such as: Dr. George Ford PhD (Adjunct Fellow Phoenix Center and Chief Economist, Z-Tel), Robert G. Berger (Phoenix Center Adjunct Fellow and Chairman & CEO, CityNet Telecommunications), Dr. Jerry Duvall PhD (Chief Economist Emeritus, Phoenix Center and Chief Economist, FCC Mass Media Bureau), Dr. Marius Schwartz, PhD (Georgetown University and former Economics Director of Enforcement at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice), Dan Gonzalez (Vice President, XO Communications), Tom Koutsky (Adjunct Fellow, Phoenix Center, and former Associate General Counsel, Covad), John Thorne (Deputy General Counsel, Verizon), Larry Clinton (USTA), Dr. Tom Hazlett PhD (AEI), Dr. Robert Crandall PhD (Brookings Institution), Phil Verveer (Partner, Willke Farr & Gallagher), Brian O’Connor (Phoenix Center Editorial Advisory Board Member and Vice President, VoiceStream), Dr. Doron Fertig PhD (Senior Economist, McKinsey & Co.) and Bob Atkinson (Executive Director, Columbia Institute of Tele-Information and Deputy Chief, FCC Common Carrier Bureau).

As noted above, one of the Phoenix Center’s primary missions is to increase the analytical rigor of public-policy decision-making. To this end, in addition to this excellent program, the Phoenix Center took the opportunity at this year’s Symposium to recognize those public officials who contributed to this process.

The first way the Phoenix Center recognized policy-makers who seek to maximize consumer welfare at this year’s Symposium was by citing a select bi-partisan group of legislators as “Friends of Telecoms Competition” in recognition of their legislative actions that contributed to the maximization of U.S. consumer welfare. The Phoenix Center selected each year’s class of “Friends of Telecoms Competition” based upon a confidential survey of foremost players in the U.S. telecommunications industry, including leading people from academia, government and the private sector.

The Phoenix Center’s Class of “Friends of Telecoms Competition” for 2001 are:

Symposium available for interested people who could not attend the Symposium in person. As noted below, the video record of the Symposium is broken into four separate files. Just click on the desired file format and speed that you would like to use. In addition, where available, we have posted the PowerPoint slide presentations of several speakers so that these presentations can be viewed along with the video presentation.